


breathe in all that air, and be happy that it’s there

by timeladyleo



Series: baptisms [2]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 02:03:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21028454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeladyleo/pseuds/timeladyleo
Summary: Arthur Shappey and reflections on a new home.





	breathe in all that air, and be happy that it’s there

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunanimal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunanimal/gifts).

> The wonderful lunanimal asked if I could do a little sequel to the previous work, and because I am a sucker for making Arthur sad (sorry!), I indulged. Title once again harvested from Radical Face's _Baptisms_, which in a bout of originality, went into the series name too. 
> 
> May do more of these if the mood takes me so. Feel free to offer suggestions, otherwise, enjoy!

He pulled his knees closer to his chest. He was too tall to do this now, really, his legs too long for the kitchen chair so his heels kept slipping off as he turned his head to look around the new room. New house. Smelled wrong. Looked wrong, felt wrong. 

They’d moved house before, when he’d been smaller. He remembered putting all his things carefully into a box, telling each of his teddies and toys that they were going on a little adventure, that they might be in the dark and afraid for a little while, but that he was going to come back for them. He promised he wouldn’t leave them in the box forever. 

He’d cried when Dad had thrown the box into the removal van carelessly. He remembered the shouting and shuddered. 

It was different now. Mum had told him that. Promised. New house meant new everything. That had seemed obvious to him when she said it, but he hadn’t mentioned it because Mum had her serious face on, and he knew better than to interrupt that. Fitton was a small town, she said, but it had an airfield and plenty to do. 

He wondered if he’d miss his friends, or if they would miss him. 

He leaned back as far as he dared, craning his head up to look at the ceiling. His eyes traced the swirling patterns in it, and though he’d never really understood the point of decorative ceilings he appreciated them. That bit looked like a bear. That was a frog, and next to it, and angry dragon. A toad. In the corner, a dog, sticking out its tongue at a moose. 

Maybe Mum would let them get a dog now. Dad had never liked dogs. 

Mum was in the kitchen, reheating a pizza they’d got from Tesco earlier. She hadn’t even complained when he’d asked if they could have garlic bread. He hadn’t decided if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Mum said that them moving was a good thing, and she had even been trying to smile every time she said it, but he knew that smiles like that usually meant it wasn’t you Mum was trying to convince. 

If it was a good thing, why did she still look sad all the time? Then again, they had moved yesterday, literally. At least, into this house. They’d stayed in a hotel yesterday, so he wasn’t counting that as a real day, even though Mum had let them have the all you can eat breakfast. That was another nice thing she’d done recently. There had been so many, it was beginning to get worrying. 

The ceiling in the hotel had been too flat everywhere, except for one little crack that began suddenly and wove across into the wall, like smoke. He had tried not to indulge the imagining where the crack had opened up and everything above had fallen on them, crushed them instantly before they could even see the house. He knew this was his brain trying to tell him he was worried, but he didn’t want to say anything to Mum because she was pretending not to be worried, and she was being nice which meant that she was really, really worried. 

No matter what other people thought, sometimes he wasn’t that stupid. Sometimes he understood other people. And he understood no-one better than Mum.

She was humming to herself in the kitchen, probably not realising he could hear her. He liked it even though he didn’t know what song it was. He imagined a small orchestra accompanying her, following her tune precisely. She hadn’t done any humming or singing in a long time, not since he was smaller and she came and sang until he was asleep to try and make him have nice dreams. It hadn’t always worked. 

His heel slipped off the chair again and he resigned himself to the fact that he was too big for it. As he leaned forward to rest his head on the table, his eyes were drawn to the stack of boxes in the corner. There weren’t as many as he thought there ought to be, especially as that was the stuff for most of the house. 

He had two boxes of his things, packed neatly by his own hand. He’d done it while things were being ‘sorted’, talking to himself to try and ignore the shouting. 

Did it make him bad to be glad that Dad wasn’t going to be here to shout any more? He smiled at his own rhyme, but it quickly faded as he considered the question again. He loved Dad because he was Dad, but he had also made Mum miserable, and Arthur loved Mum too. How could it be wrong to want to love both? Somehow, he didn’t think he was getting an answer to that question, and he wouldn’t dare ask Mum. That felt like somewhere he should never go, asking Mum about Dad. The last thing he wanted to do was make Mum miserable again. 

And anyway, Dad had been horrible! If he told himself that, maybe he could stop trying to justify Dad’s behaviour. Maybe he could even make himself believe that Dad was a bad person through and through, and that was why he had done all those bad things. Arthur shut his eyes to try and purge bad memories from his mind.

Dad had been bad. He knew that. Dad had been awful to Mum, and not very nice to him either. He knew that too.

Why did he still want to love him? 

The boxes weren’t in a neat pile, nor were they quite stacked well enough to be a ready-made fort. He didn’t think Mum would be very happy if he went and started playing in them. He was seventeen now, almost old enough to be allowed to do anything, almost old enough to vote or smoke. Definitely too old to be making forts out of boxes. Even if the boxes would be perfect for one. A perfect place to hide. 

He felt the temptation to fall into imaginings again. Probably, he ought to be too old for that too. _Escapism_, that was what his teacher had said. Mr Hopson. He had liked Mr Hopson, even though he had been the maths teacher and Arthur had been his worst student. In grades, anyway. Arthur had always tried very hard even though he wasn’t very good. And anyway, what was wrong with escaping into something more fun anyway? 

Out loud, he whispered an ‘oh’ to himself as he answered his own questions. 

Maybe that was why Mum kept insisting that this new house would be a fun adventure. Maybe she was escaping too. Maybe she was just as afraid as he was to be here in a new town, new house, getting a new job, running a new airline. Making new friends. 

She was doing interviews this week. Arthur had offered to help her practice but she’d said no. He had then gone and conducted his own interviews in the hotel, in the dark, until he’d fallen asleep. 

The oven door slammed, making him jump, pulling his eyes away from the skirting board that he’d been tracing over. Whoever had painted the wall hadn’t done a very good job of not painting the board too. Little wobbles and flecks of brown were scattered all along it, and he was imagining ants making their way across a desert, marching home under a hot sun, trying to go as fast as they could so they could get home before they were baked alive. 

This was all forgotten by the sight of Mum in the doorway, wielding garlic bread. He smiled at her, sitting up. She didn’t even tell him off for lounging about on the dining table. She just laid down the pizza, cut into uneven and wonky triangles, and the bread, pre-sliced in the factory. Arthur compared the lines and tried to stop himself going off on a tangent in his mind. 

As he tried to see how much pizza he could eat in one go, Mum said her thing about the new start again. He decided that she was definitely trying to convince herself, so smiled again and told her that he was sure it would all be fine. 

She smiled back, but sadly. He was pretty sure that was what his smiles looked like too, but there was a new look in Mum’s eyes, a glint that he hadn’t seen before. One that made him genuinely believe everything was going to be okay. 

He imagined a future where none of their expressions were fake, and they got to travel the world together as much as they wanted. If only Mum could see inside his head! Maybe they couldn’t get to that exact future – it was an imagining, after all. But if they could get nearly there, just maybe things would be okay, after all.


End file.
